Hi everyone!

I’d like to introduce you to the brand new Metacafe Studio, a great new section of Metacafe’s site dedicated to our amazing community of video creators.  The Studio gives us a chance to showcase your original work and your fascinationg stories.  It’s also a place where all video creators from first-timers to established professionals can pick up great tips, find resources, and share advice for future projects.

Don’t worry – all the Producer Rewards features you’re used to seeing under the Producer Rewards tab are still here – but with a twist. Now you’ll have more stats and more exposure!

For example, you can still see the Top Producers list, but now you can choose if you’d like to see the top producers of the week, month, or all time. You can sort them by earnings, number of videos submitted to Metacafe, and the average rank.

We wanted to give you, our amazing video creators, more exposure, so we will now feature a different producer every day, including a link to the Producer’s page – so don’t forget to spiffy up your profile with an avatar, a quote, and a link to your website.

The Spotlight section specifically was created to give all of our video creators more exposure. Here you’ll find some of Metacafe’s favorite Producer Rewards videos and interviews with some of Metacafe’s video creators. This section will also feature video news, updated daily, tips and tools of the trade, and columns by your favorite producers and industry leaders. Here you’ll find information like what type of music can be used for Producer Rewards.

In our Resources page, you’ll find everything you need to get your video off the ground, including links to stock media, software, and product reviews that will help you choose the best resources to fit your particular needs. We know that you don’t have Hollywood budgets, so we made sure to include a lot of free sites as well.

Ever wanted to shoot a video outdoors, but couldn’t get the lighting right? How about that awesome �Pleasantville� or “Sin City� affect where everything is black and white except for one color? Well, here’s an extra something you won’t find on any other video site: The Metacafe Production School. In this section you’ll find tons of tutorials about everything related to video production from the most basic, such as camera work and movement, to the more advanced topics like lighting, sound, and editing.

We created this “studio� FOR you, and we want to see YOU be a part of it. If you think you can contribute to any of these sections, email us at studio@metacafe.com and show us what you’ve got!

And stop by the forums and let us know what you think about Metacafe Studio. I hope to see you there soon!

Hi all!

I wanted to let you know about a contest we have going on with NewTeeVee.com. From now until June 17th (I know it’s short notice), you can submit parody videos to the contest where winners are featured on our home page!

You can submit parody videos that you made before, or new ones that you’d like to make now. If your videos follow our Producer Rewards guidelines, then they will also qualify for the program!

In order to submit, go to http://screenings.newteevee.com/ and embed the video from Metacafe.

So get your cameras rolling and your fingers submitting, because the winners are guaranteed tons of views when they are featured on Metacafe.

For more details about this contest, click here.

Hi guys,

I’d like to explain to you a few changes that we made on the site today, mainly regarding the Most Recent page. The way the Most Recent page used to work was that 6 videos were released each hour – one every 10 minutes. Last week we changed it so that any video that reached a rank of at least 2.70 and an X amount of ranks was released immediately to the site. Today we made our final transition into our new release system. From now on, every video uploaded to Metacafe will be released within 30 minutes to the Most Recent page, or 3 hours tops (in cases where a video was flagged inappropriate by reviewers and viewers).

This means that there are more videos being released every hour, however this will not affect your video’s chance of doing well on Metacafe. In fact, your videos now have a better chance for exposure for several reasons:

* The Highest Ranked page depends solely on rank. It doesn’t matter how many views it has.
* The Most Discussed page is clearly not affected by this change.
* The Most Viewed page still shows the highest viewed videos of the past 48 hours. If before this the average was say 100 views an hour and you needed to have more than 100 views an hour to be on the Most Viewed page, now the average is say 50 views an hour so you only need over 50 views to be on the Most Viewed page. Don’t forget that your videos aren’t the only ones affected by this – so is everyone else’s.
* The default view for the site is filtered to video with a rank of 3.00 and above. You can manually change it to show lower-ranked videos above a certain rank (2.70, for example) or all videos. What does this mean to you? It means that the videos with a rank above 3.00 will actual remain on the Most Recent page longer than before. This is true also for the Most Viewed and Most Discussed pages. Everyone can change the rank filter on their home page to reflect what they would like to see.

All your videos will still be released to Metacafe Pro, meaning your video will still gain exposure and those all-important ranks that will help your video do better and be seen by more people. While this is a big change for Metacafe, I can assure you that it is a change for the better.

More good things are coming up very soon, so stay tuned.

Hi all,

Over the past few weeks, I have been asked repeatedly about our policy towards fraudulent submissions to Producer Rewards so I wanted to address this issue. Let me first define what we mean by ‘fraud’. I believe ‘fraud’ is committed when the submitter knowingly and intentionally submits something to which he does not hold all the necessary rights.

I’m not talking about something which may arguably be considered ‘Fair Use’. I mean something which is intended to make money for the submitter who is dishonestly posing as the originator of the video. Another definition of fraud is when a submitter actively ‘games’ the system, attempting to artificially inflate the number of views or the rank of his video by continually performing rankable activities on that video.

We are actively watching for both these kinds of fraud and as soon as we have good reason to conclude that fraud has been committed or attempted we act definitively. In addition to proactively looking for fraud we take into account comments or email that is sent to us from members of the community.

We recognize that some members may not be acting in good faith when they make claims against other members, and we investigate claims carefully to eliminate this kind of abuse. Making unsubstantiated or false accusations against another member can also result in suspension of some or all of your privileges on Metacafe.

We reserve the right to take whatever action we deem necessary in response to a fraud investigation. It is our policy not to comment on any ongoing or completed fraud investigation or to publicly disclose the results.

I hope you will appreciate the sensitivity of these cases and respect our need for impartiality when discussions on these topics arise. I believe that the forum is a good place for healthy debate, but I ask that everyone think carefully before throwing around unsubstantiated accusations.

As you know, you can always contact us privately either through the forums or the regular customer support email addresses.

I am happy to answer your questions as always, but I will not talk about individual cases, nor will I explain our fraud detection methods (as this kinds of makes life easier for the fraudsters).